Crystal Carriages
by Nials
Summary: Marge Dursley dies peacefully in her sleep on June the 15th when Harry is seventeen. On June 20th, the night of her funeral, the lives of Harry Potter and his cousin Dudley are changed forever. Drawn into a century old war, will the two of them survive? Time Travel AU. Rating may change.
1. Funeral Wraiths

AN: There's a fairly high chance that this ends up being kind of clunky and stilted. With my writers block being the way it is, however, if I have to spit out word salad to get this up then I'm just gonna spit out some word salad. I'm going to try my damnedest to give this a semi frequent update schedule but no promises, as my track record is pretty damn awful with them I have to say, and inspiration hard to come by to say the least.

(Edit: Now with some last minute additions now that I'm not half delirious from lack of sleep.)

Disclaimer: I own none of the characters or various brand items that may or may not be mentioned within this work, and likely never will.

* * *

...Ch 1 Funeral Wraiths...

* * *

Marjorie Eileen Dursley's funeral is held on a particularly sunny day in late June. It is a quiet and peaceful death, alone and at home and utterly out of the blue. She'd gone to sleep one day and simply hadn't woken up again in the morning due to perfectly natural causes.

She had not been particularly close to the rest of her family. She had loved her brother in the way older siblings did, had tolerated her sister-in-law, and fawned over her nephew, but had much preferred the company of her dogs.

Dudley had never really considered the idea that she might ever die.

Which is not to say that he had been particularly fond of her, but that didn't mean he wanted her dead. She'd just been there, always a part of his life, visiting occasionally, sending gifts at Christmas and at birthdays, and often being mentioned during breakfast over sausage and eggs and the morning mail.

"Marge's got a new batch of pups." Or "Marge is off on holiday in such and such, the lucky devil."

He'd never imagined that one day she'd be gone, buried under the ground as if she'd never even existed. Would that happen to him one day, all but forgotten to anyone but family and close friends? It was an odd thought, quite unlike him, but then again things had been changing lately, the world suddenly seeming bleaker and more dangerous than it had been before.

'Harry would know.' He thought, grimacing. He didn't like thinking about it, about Harry or the things that he knew, about the warnings the small boy had given him before he had marched off to war.

Dudley didn't know what it was he was expecting around every corner, in every shadow, but it couldn't be good.

His fathers ugly sobbing was the only sound in the graveyard. He looked awful, face purple and blotchy with tears, and dressed in a large unflattering suit that was still somehow too small. Dudley's mother on the other hand just looked pinched and much too pale in her positively horrendous black dress and shawl. Dudley knew that he probably didn't look much better than his parents, the cheap suit sticky in the oppressive summer heat and crinkled from the drive over.

His mother hadn't liked Aunt Marge much, although she'd never said anything to her husband. Her in-law had been much too loud, too crude. And while a small child would think that an absolute riot, a married housewife concerned with self image would decidedly not.

She hadn't liked the dogs either.

Too much hair.

Too much noise.

It was with some relief that Dudley and Petunia quickly retreated back to the blissfully air-conditioned car shortly after the burial itself. It was too hot to be wearing black, the summer heat having rolled in with a vengeance two weeks before and cooking them where they stood.

They spent several minutes sitting there in the cool filtered air, Dudley fiddling idly with his I-pod and Petunia staring pensively out of the window, before Vernon came back pale in the face and shaking.

The drive back home was uncomfortably silent, although the building they lived in could hardly be called 'Home'.

Home had been number 4 Privet drive, not the decent sized apartment they now lived in. It was wildly different to the small suburban house that Dudley had lived in for his entire life. It had no garden, and no fences too peek over, and it was only one floor all smashed together into a tangled jumble of rooms. The rooms themselves were small, the furniture from Privet drive looking far too cramped and out of place in the whitewashed walls.

Petunia and Vernon hated it, but there was nothing they could do about it. It was acceptable, and a place to live unmolested by magical and that was enough for them, more than enough. They'd do anything to be rid of that part of their lives. Anything to be rid of the secret that they'd carried with them for seventeen long years.

Dudley didn't know what to think of the building, or the neighbourhood, or even the neighbours themselves. They weren't close to any of his friends, or indeed anything remotely more interesting than the small antiques place on the corner.

His new room was smaller and painted a particularly awful looking yellow. Yellow like runny eggs or sunflowers, he thought, nothing like the blue his old room had been. Bare too, the majority of his old pesters having been left at number four, having been far too troublesome to scrape off of the wallpaper. His computer was there on his desk, his sports equipment was stacked up in the corner by the too small window, and various bits and pieces he had collected through his life scattered about every available space.

He'd been considering moving out lately, maybe a flat share with Piers, or even branching out on his own and having a stab at university. He wasn't sure what course he wanted to take, but his A- Levels were decent enough- not brilliant but decent.

It'd be better than living here he thinks, sitting down for dinner with the rest of his family several hours later. He was finally out of that stuffy suit, and back in his comfortable jeans and t-shirts. Nobody speaks a word and even their breathing is unnaturally quiet, Vernon staring blankly at the plate in front of him and hardly paying any attention to his surroundings at all.

He was still wearing the too small suit and looked _awful_, all ragged, and grey, and as if the very life had been sucked from his bones.

Dudley stabbed his vegetables, idly shunting them around the plate. He wasn't at all hungry, not for unappetising casserole, and mushy carrots and peas. Maybe later he'd order a Chinese or curry, but he wouldn't eat now, sitting in stilted silence with his family.

"Whatever will happen to her dogs?" Petunia asks eventually, glancing up from her peas in an attempt to make small talk.

Vernons face twists but he doesn't say anything.

Disappointed at the failed distraction from impending boredom, Dudley looks back down and, consequently, completely misses what happens next.

The table shatters with the sound of breaking wood and smashed tableware and Vernon Dursley _shifts_. The boy lurches backwards in alarm, his chair crashing to the ground, Petunia freezing in shocked horror at the spectacle in front of her.

"Dad?!" Dudley squawks, nearly tripping over his downed chair as he back up.

Vernon expands upwards and outwards, skin bubbling away and clothes tearing with a wet rip. What is revealed in his place is awful, skeletal and bony, limbs too long and spindly and head too big, a pale imitation of the human form. A grotesque limb, part arm and part machine all smashed together into a metallic monstrosity, reaches forwards and-

-Petunia dies.

Dudley's mother dies.

She's there one second and a blackening corpse the next. Dudley can't help but think of burnt corpses, people who'd been stuck in the searing heat of a roaring fire and died, and how she looks just as brittle and breakable for just a moment before she _dissolves_. Breaks into a cloud of ash, leaving her clothes sat limply on her overturned chair.

She's gone, and Dudley's scrambling away, the monster –it has his fathers face! His fathers FACE!- turning to follow.

Dudley darts through the kitchen door and into the too small hallway, the loud crash of the table colliding with the far wall indicating that the thing was right behind him. Powdered plaster and concrete gums his nose and chokes him as the thing jams its face through the open doorway, taking out a massive chunk of the wall. It takes only seconds for him to reach his bedroom, having dropped into a panicked sprint as soon as its head had so much as peeked through behind him.

He gasped, lungs aching, ducking a fast moving something that obliterated the bathroom and kicked up even more dust. He gagged.

God, why had he decided to take up smoking? Why?! Teenaged rebellion of course but good god did he regret it! He should have known better, didn't they block the inside of the lungs or something? Stop him from being able to take in air? Air he could totally have used right now?

Dudley scrambled for his desk drawer, yanking it open. It was in here somewhere, it had to be. He'd put it right there hadn't he? Right next to his various game boy cartridges and a hoard of empty sweet wrappers.

Where was it?!

His da- that thing, that monster wearing his father's face, crashed loudly, smashing its way towards him through the flimsy apartment walls, louder with every second. It sounded like it had gotten stuck in one of the small rooms, but it wouldn't be long until it crushed its way through and got him. Not long until the thing would kill him just like it'd killed his mother, gone without a trace.

There! A glint of gold. He scrabbled at the large coin frantically with numb fingers, touching the words printed along its edge and willing them to change. Harry had given it to him last year, as a just in case, and had never bothered to take it back.

'HELP! Help me! Helpmehelpme, please!'

The monster roars ear shatteringly loud and Dudley is running again.

There's no exit, no fire escape out of his tiny window, but it's just the third floor and there were cars out there to land on if he remembered right. If he lands properly he would hopefully be able to run.

Probably.

'Please god, don't let me die.'

He yanks it open, nearly smashing the windowpane against the wall in his blind panic. There is no time, no time at all, it was right there behind him, and, from the corner of his eyes the teen could see it slowly reach for him through the open doorway.

He hauls himself through and falls.

The roof of a van is surprisingly hard. He slams into it with all the grace of a sack of bricks, his forward momentum from the jump launching him clear off the roof and to the ground below. The vans security alarm howls its protest.

He botches the landing, smashes his knees to the sidewalk and is sent sprawling from the force of it, but he's alive and the thing screams with rage. His jeans are ruined, he realises idly, and if they hadn't been mostly holes before the knees certainly are now.

A glance shows that the thing is furious, it's grotesque face curling into a terrible sneer, and it slams a fleshy metallic fist clean through the wall in its fury. It'll be stuck for a minute or two, maybe less, but that depends on how quickly it can smash itself through.

He crawls to his feet, knees aching, hands scraped, lungs protesting all the way.

And then he runs.

* * *

Nials (Previously NialsFiction)


	2. Harrying Times

AN: Oddly enough this chapter and the first were both meant to be one chapter. However in order to get it out at all I had to cut in half as it was going to be uncooperative and take at least another month.

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...Ch 2 Harrying Times...

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In a story, fact or fiction, there are points where change is inevitable. All things change eventually. Circumstances and personal mindsets may switch overnight, while some changes are subtler and difficult to spot unless they are carefully observed over a large period of time. Others, such as a severe physical injury, are much more blatantly obvious.

Sometimes however there are Changes.

This specific breed of change tends to be utterly world bending events that swiftly tip life on its head and leave people scrambling to recover. Very, very few people will ever experience a Change of that magnitude (subtle or otherwise) even once in their lives.

Some people on the other hand… have the particularly bad habit of running into a particularly potent Change several times in one lifetime.

Harry isn't all that unfamiliar with Changes. He's run into a few, like a Letter, and a Mirror, and a Book, a Lonely Man looking for revenge, a War, and the end of that same War, but he'd never encountered one quite like this.

This particular change, at first, seems relatively harmless.

Dudley is the one to tell him, a short message sent to the Weasley address (or more accurately Ottery St-Catchpole and delivered by a highly disgruntled and swiftly obliviated mailman) in much the same tone as a note on the weather.

"Oh by the way, Aunt Marge has died."

Dudleys not-quite-friendliness as of late was as welcome as it was disconcerting. He was certainly more open for a word or two than he had ever been before. They'd parted on reasonable terms back… well it felt like years ago now even if it had only been something like just over half a year. They'd only been talking for two months or so of course, ever since the fighting had stopped, it hadn't been safe before, but with things finally petering out into a time of relative peacefulness, why not?

Petunia occasionally added a word or two in the letters, maybe sometimes it'd be a recipe or something like that, but not at all frequently. Her messages were few and far between, and written tersely and without warmth. Vernon never sent anything whatsoever, which Harry thought was good. He'd had enough of the man while the two had been living under the same roof, and playing polite now that they no longer did was highly unappealing.

It was awkward and stilted, and they rarely went into depth about anything at all but it was still contact, it was still something.

They were still family, if estranged.

Which was why he'd given his cousin a coin, one of the dud Galleons for just-in-case emergency situations, specially charmed so that even the small reserves of a muggle were more than enough to operate it. He sent it with the added warning that he might not be able to come. Either because he was dead, had been captured, had been running for his life or one of the many other horrible, terrible, things that went hand in hand with being a fugitive in a war.

All three had happened in the end. He'd run and been caught and died, but the war was over.

It was strange to think about. No one had ever really expected it to end, and definitely not as abruptly as it had. The guillotine blade hanging over their heads was suddenly gone, the fighting petering out abruptly with Voldemorts death. Death Eaters had frozen where they stood, gawping as their Lord fell in front of their very eyes. Those fighting for the DA and Order had no such problems, immediately jumping up to stun as many people as they could.

Tom had been the lynch-pin, Harry supposed, the one thing holding it all together, and it showed with how quickly everything had returned to some semblance of normality once he was gone. Good people had been lost, and bad, the old and the young, leaving only rubble and the tears of those left behind.

The mass burials had been horrible. There had been so many children, kids even younger than Harry who had died, either in the initial strike or the fighting that had followed. Some were hardly recognisable, having been hit with a bombarda or the like, and others torn to pieces with cutting hexes. It had been impossible to find all the pieces, and no doubts body parts would be turning up throughout the remainder of the cleanup.

They'd needed to do a roll call for every year afterwards, and each absence was a physical blow.

Harry supposed he hated Tom very very much in those long hours, searching for the dead and putting names to faces. That one blonde girl had been in his Astronomy class, she'd always sat nearest the wall like she'd been afraid of the drop. He'd seen that black boy at breakfast every morning, he'd always be there first, no matter how early Harry got up. He'd always eat blood pudding with mashed potatoes every day. The Slytherin boy had always been hanging out with that Ravenclaw girl, now they were both gone, one missing pieces and the other looking like she'd simply fallen asleep there in the rubble.

The bodies had to be taken to the teachers to be identified, and hadn't that been awful watching the people who had all but raised these children break just a little bit more each time they saw a familiar face, a student, a charge.

He hadn't even known their names.

He did now, and now nobody would forget them ever again, carved as they were in a cold stone plaque with their ages right beside them. It was a plain undecorated stone monolith, sat out on the lawn and absolutely covered in names and dates and the ages of the deceased.

Their houses hadn't been written, it was unimportant in the face of the fact that these were people who had died. Children who had had friends, who had had families, and would never be coming back ever again.

Yes Harry thought he hated Tom. Pitied him as well, but mostly hated,.

Some people Harry had known though, like Remus, and he buries the last of his fathers friends next to his wife, determined not to think of their baby boy and his grandmother, now utterly alone in the world. Colin had been horrible, Dennis' face had been a dreadful shade of sickly grey he'd been handed his brother's camera. Snape is buried without fanfare, no one mourning the loss of a man who had ruined so many children's lives, on the right side or not, and his name, like the remaining Death Eaters, is not shown. Ron had cried for Lavender, and Draco had cried quietly for Crabbe where no one could see him, and honestly everyone had cried a great deal in the end.

Harry didn't think he had any tears left to cry any more.

Fred had been a gaping wound. A hole in Harrys heart that he knew would never ever heal. His name was on the plaque even if his body had been buried in the Weasley family plot, far far away from what had once been a battlefield. There was a space underneath his for George, because something in him had died that day, everyone could see it. It was only a matter of waiting now as the rest of his body caught up with his heart.

The relative peacefulness of it all, once the fighting is over and done with, chafes. They all come to him for help.

He doesn't understand why, but then again he never had.

Never would.

"Harry, there's a collapsed corridor on the sixth floor, could you lend a hand?"

"Harry we've found more bodies, where do we take them?"

"Harry the parents are starting to arrive."

"Harry do you know where my sister is? Could you find my sister Harry, please? Please? I want my sister."

He tries to avoid talking to anyone but his close friends in the aftermath, the DA and the Order the only people he can trust to not fawn over his every word. Helping out with recovery is fine, every hand more than needed, but the look of blatant awe in their eyes as they looked at him was flat out wrong.

"I don't understand." He'd said quietly to Hermione a few days afterwards, the both of them working on one of the trickier collapses in an attempt to open another route to the Hospital wing. Anything to open up space for more healers and more patients, every little thing helped, even if it was seventh years churning out blood replenishing potions like clockwork or younger years helping with the bandages.

"They need an icon Harry, something to raise morale, and what better than a Hero."

He frowns sharply at her, eyes gaunt and brows furrowed. She is a wreck, eyes red and covered with ash and dirt, and he knew he looked no better. There was too much that needed to be done, no time for rest, and by now they were so used to always being on the move that doing nothing felt wrong.

"I'm not a Hero." He snaps.

No one else agrees.

* * *

The announcement of Marge's passing had done nothing at all for him. To be quite frank Harry hadn't given a damn about the old bint, and he'd had more pressing concerns besides.

He is, naturally, not invited to the funeral.

Harry does not consider that much of a loss. She had not been a particularly pleasant woman by any stretch of the imagination. Cruel to anyone who wasn't one of her prized dogs and occasionally her brother, Harry had never liked the old bat. The only positive memory being the incident where he'd managed to turn her into a particularly gruesomely ugly blimp and promptly fled the neighbourhood.

He's busy anyway, even if he had wanted to go (and he would never admit out loud that he had considered going later, just to say goodbye even if she had been an utter hag). He thinks he might be jealous, just a little. All these unnatural deaths and there she is passing away peacefully in her sleep surrounded by the dogs she had considered family. Much, much, more than could be said of the people who had died here, at the one place he had ever considered home.

The castle is broken now and it'll never feel safe ever again, and wouldn't for anyone who had been there, those who remembered the fighting. It had never been safe for him before but at least it had been home.

It isn't anymore.

Harry's in Hogsmeade when it happens, finishing off repairs, the little sleepy village not having escaped some damage at the hands of the Deatheaters.

Neville is somewhere down the street with Ron, wrestling the residents into some sort of order, and Harry is very proud of how much he's grown into his shoes these past weeks. All of them are, actually, the striking image of him executing Nagini not one anyone would be forgetting soon, and Harry is glad that he is not the only one suffering through Herodom.

It's just as he's straightening out, stretching the kinks out of his shoulders and just about ready to call it a day, that Harry's heart stops.

His pocket is burning.

The pocket with the fake Galleons. He had his own coin, obviously, as well as the members of the DA who had perished in the battle. It was only a few but even those few were far, far, too many.

He's deathly pale as he immediately reaches down to snatch the first one he can find, burning like a flat sun in his palm. It's mostly reflex and the remembered terror from the past year that makes him move so quickly. The secret messages sent back and forth over the shiny surface of the coin, a fresh fear that maybe this time someone has died, maybe this time someone's finally run out of luck.

The system had changed slightly since it's first conception back in fifth year, less for a secret society and more for a quick way to send warnings between people stuck behind different lines.

He thumbs its surface frantically, looking for the initials carved into it's face. D.D.

Dudley. Location 'The Flat'. Situation 'Critical'.

He's gone the next second.

He'd checked it out, both the apartment and it's neighbourhood for just this reason. He had been there when they had picked it out, even, hidden under his invisibility cloak and straight back to Privet drive as soon as possible. He'd gotten the licence for apperating a month ago, now that he could, and it'd been a godsend so far. So much quicker, even if it felt awful, but instantaneous travel was worth it and lately he even thought that maybe it had started to feel a little less bad, a touch less gut wrenching.

The boy, still too small to be considered a young man, arrives to a shower of flame and the Dursleys apartment carved out of the building it had once been part of. The floors above it were going, or would go soon, the supports absolutely mangled and even from the street he could easily see the slow slide as it started to tip over sideways. It'd be hell for the muggles to clean up afterwards, but it wasn't at risk of breaking the adjacent building.

It looked awful and he is immediately reminded of Hogwarts in that last battle, windows lit with an unholy fire and slowly crumbling around them all. The crash as concrete hits the tarmac below is similar enough, even if this is no grand castle.

He listened, ducking under a horribly bent street lamp – heavy collision, not spell damage, or at least not a spell he's ever heard of- skidding to a stop by the curb just under the worst of the damage. One wall missing, what had once been a window scattered across everything in a layer of glittering powder, and the shattered wreck of a white van, bent under some sort of heavy impact.

This was how they'd left then, Dudley and whatever it had that had been following him. The front entrance was unmarked and whatever it was had clearly started out right in the middle of the apartment itself, maybe in the kitchen if he's seeing the debris right. It had been something large and heavy if the sheer damage the van had received was any indication, the painted metal looking remarkably like it had been flattened by a small giant in Harry's opinion.

Now, supposing that it had also hit the lamppost, that most likely meant they'd gone... there!

Harry whips around and begins to run.

"Dudley!" He roars.

He couldn't hear much, the only smell was fire with a strange plastic undertone, acrid and choking, ashes and something else, everything drowned under the scared shouting of the witnesses, but if he listened maybe he could hear something, anything, and-

The sound of something very, very large smashing into a window was just the thing he needed.

"Dudley!"

A right, a quick left and he was there. An old antiques store with the entirety of it's shop front blown inwards, just on the corner.

He jumps over the remains of the wall, wand in hand and freezes with alarm.

Dudley is flat on his back, covered with what looked to be at least two buildings worth of dust and debris, and scrambling away from-

"What the fuck is that?!"

It stops, the grotesque skull like appendage with a gaping jaw and sunken eyes that was apparently it's head swinging to look at Harry, but the boy keeps moving. A battered London street was not the place to duke it out with a... a thing.

He'd never seen anything like it before. An abomination of bone, twisted metal and blackened flesh, it stood easily twice as tall as Harry himself. Like some sort of inferi that'd been mashed with cobbled together machine parts and electrical wiring into something that vaguely resembled a human.

"Yoooouuuuu..!" The thing hisses and Dudley lurches in surprise, scrambling away as fast as he can carry himself over the wrecked tables and display cases.

Harry just blinks as it turns around to face him completely, utterly dismissing the larger boy still fighting to stand upright. There's a strange symbol on it's forehead he notices, although that all he can as in the next second he's launching himself sideways as the thing moves.

He doesn't see what he does but he could feel it, the blast of air as something tears through where he'd been standing not even a second before. It'd have torn his arm clean off, he's sure. Bleeding out would have been the very least of his problems then.

"Youuuuuuu..!" The creature shrieks, this time reaching out to try and grab at him with a twisted hand.

Harry runs for cover, ducking behind a fairly intact shelf, and suddenly the thing is launching itself across the room at him, screaming shrilly.

It's a horrible sound, and the hairs at the back of his neck raise in protest. He'd have shivered had he not been more concerned with getting to Dudley. As it is he blasts a display case at the creature with a silent Repulso spell, sending objects flying wildly about the trashed room, and using that as a distraction.

Dudley's on his feet now. The two boys lunge at each other, Dudley grabbing onto his cousins arm hard and that was all Harry needed.

He turned, sharply, and they were gone.

The problem, he quickly realised, was that this was definitely not the way that apparition was meant to feel.

Apparition was, in a word, nauseating. The sensation of being stretched and squished and abruptly dropped at a completely different location than where you'd begun was distinctly unpleasant. It also never seemed to take very long, and if executed properly used a surprisingly small amount of energy.

This trip, and he had been certain that he'd done it correctly he'd thought of the three Ds the same as ever, had felt completely different. It had started out as per usual, everything had abruptly gone black, the universe had started pressing in, and then something had gone wrong.

Instead of being stretched he felt like he was being wrenched, as if something had grabbed Dudley mid jump and pulled, taking Harry along with it and throwing them wildly off course.

They landed heavily a small eternity later, the momentum making the two crash together hard.

Dudleys legs give out and Harry stumbles, nearly falling over himself at the sudden weight and the drain on his reserves. The younger boy is suddenly reminded of some of the worst parts of the past year, where food had been hard to come by and sleep nearly just as difficult. He'd been running on fumes back then, fumes and an all encompassing terror.

A quick scan shows they are both surprisingly uninjured. Whole and unsplinched, and while Dudleys trousers were ruined, his knees at the very least badly bruised, and the taller boy wheezing like a leaky balloon, he overall seemed fine.

Harry's definition of fine is skewed, as Madame Pomfrey is wont to telling him, as frequently as she can get away with.

So they were both alive. Good.

He didn't recognize the alleyway. Less good, especially considering that he'd been intending to pop to the Leakey Cauldron.

Both boys stared at each other.

"What did you just do?" Dudley croaked.

Harry just shrugged.

* * *

AN:

While writing I listened to the entire Epicon and All Drums Go to Hell albums and just about had a heart attack, very fun.

Also, Dudleys name is a pain to spell. The 'e' refuses to cooperate with me whatsoever.

* * *

Nials


	3. Out of Twig

...Ch 1 Out of Twig...

* * *

It is immediately clear that they are no longer in the 20th century and Dudley feels like laughing. He's probably more than a bit hysterical, the mad rush of the last few minutes finally catching up to him.

"Time travel?" He asked faintly. "You can time travel?"

The horse drawn carriages and the people wandering around in full dresses and clean suits make this realisation particularly obvious, and Dudley immediately feels wildly out of place. With the both of them wearing jeans and t-shirts they would have stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the reasonably well dressed crowd just past the mouth of the dingy alley they had landed in.

Harry nods.

"Yeah, have been able to for... a few years, I suppose? I really don't know much about it."

"Thats... not good." Dudley said, and Harry nods his agreement from just ahead of him. It _looked_ like Charing Cross, Dudley having visited at some point with his mother, with at least a few of the buildings looking the same as he remembered them. Apparently not everything had changed over the years but he couldn't be entirely sure.

He felt distinctly ill, the situation as far outside of his comfort zone as it was possible to be. He knew he was pale under his scrapes and scratches and, while he wasn't sure if he looked it, he definitely felt a second away from keeling over in a dead faint at the absurdity of it all.

Harry on the other hand looks perfectly unruffled. He's crouched down close to the ground, wand in his grip, and scanning the fast moving Victorian street carefully for... for who knew what.

"And what do we do now?!" Dudley asks, just a bit hysterically, eyes stuck on one particularly opulent looking carriage that clattered its way down the street. It was a massive thing, all black and gold, and Dudley was certain he'd never once been so close to beasts as large as those horses in his entire life.

Harry seemed to take the opportunity to think very, very hard.

Dudley knew that his cousin had been in weird situations before, and by now had more than enough experience with dealing with them, surely. He wasn't disappointed, the black haired boy nearly immediately offering to apparate them directly into the back courtyard of the Leaky Cauldron this time.

"Your teleporty thing didn't go so great the first time, what makes you think it'll go any better now?" The blond asks.

"Apparition." Harry corrects, idly. "And I dunno about you, Dud, but I'd rather not wander out into that wearing this." And with that he plucks at the front of his shirt, which had 'The Chudley Cannons' emblazoned on it in a particularly eye searing shade of orange, to illustrate his point. He seemed vaguely sheepish, and Dudley wasn't surprised. Petunia wouldn't have let it into the house it was so bright, and never mind wearing it out there with all the vests and overcoats and silly looking bustle dresses.

Petunia, who had been his mother. Petunia, who had died, he suddenly remembered.

"I could conjure up some robes, but that'd be nearly as bad out in Muggle London. I think." Harry interrupted, still looking forwards into the street and thus not noticing his cousin's growing distress.

"What do you need?" Dudley asks, sharply. He can't think about it, not yet. He'll do it later when they're safe off the street and somewhere quiet and private.

"Just hold on to me, ok." Harry says, reaching back. He doesn't comment on the snappish tone, doesn't even acknowledge it even and Dudley feels irrationally angry before that quickly shifts to shame. He was trying to help, and now was not the time to behave like a spoilt child.

Dudley grimaces, before he gives in and grabs hold of the proffered arm, squeezing tightly just in case.

It feels different to before, where he had felt like he was being pulled sideways, this time it was if he were being stretched in all directions and stuffed through a thin tube. It was painful, the abrupt shift from being there to not there the most heart-stoppingly frightening feeling he's ever experienced.

They land with a crash, and this time Dudley _is_ sick, knelt down by the bins in a tiny little enclosed courtyard. It's all dirt and packed mud under his scraped hands, pressed down under years of having been stepped into shape.

It's awkward and Harry stands there silently for several minutes, not quite comfortable enough to offer comfort. Dudley is not surprised, and neither speaks as the blond eventually gets back to his feet.

Harry quickly vanishes the evidence, an idle wand gesture winking it out of existence. Afterwards he materialises two plain black cloaks out of thin air, one after the other and both completely identical.

'Amazing.' Dudley thinks blearily, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and it really is. Thanks to years of school he intellectually knows that that shouldn't be possible, that you couldn't make something out of nothing, but here his cousin was, doing just that. Such blatant power being bandied about as if its the most normal thing in the world.

And it probably was.

Harry slips the cloak on with one smooth movement, clasping it at the neck.

He looks eerie, Dudley can't help but feel. Whip thin, handsome face grim with concentration and dreadfully pale against the black fabric.

The cloak is heavy as Harry flings it over Dudley's shoulders, and made from a slightly stiff, scratchy material. He can't help but think that he probably looks terribly strange wearing it.

Dudley only has a moment to wonder about how cool the temperature is, regardless of the summer heat, before Harry whips around and seems to tap the wall for no reason whatsoever. Not even a minute later they are through the wall and into the wizarding world, Dudley hauled along by the lapels.

It is foreign and unnatural to Dudley, all cobblestone, ancient looking shop fronts, and strangely dressed shoppers, but Harry smiles, briefly and they are on their way. Apparently it is the same as ever and Dudley can't quite understand it. Had it remained unchanged this whole time?

The be-speckled boy sets them off at a comfortable pace, not too slow or too quick but at a pace that suggests that they have a clear destination in mind. He'd surprised that he came to that conclusion at all, but he looks again and he can see something in his cousins posture, the way he walks. This is not a boy out of time, and certainly not a boy who had blazed in out of nowhere to save Dudley from a terrifying monster.

"Where are we going?" Dudley hisses.

"Bank. We're going to need clothes and stuff pretty quick." Which Dudley thinks sounds very, very strange considering that he'd literally just watched him pull their cloaks out of thin air minutes before.

He says as much and Harry stops. Just stops right there in the middle of the street and stares off into space, nearly getting run into by an old lady with a food trolley before he steps to the side. The boy is looking at Dudley then, the most peculiar look on his face.

"Huh. I forgot." There is an uncomfortable pause as Dudley stares incredulously back at him. "I don't know Victorian fashion though, or even normal Victorian clothes."

Dudley had to admit, that was a small problem. Harry shakes himself and continues back down the street.

"The thing is," Harry says a few minutes later, dodging around a family of four on their way to who knew where, all of them wearing robes of various eye searing colours. "I'm not really sure how this is going to go."

"What's the problem?"

"I don't think I can access my family vaults."

Which was very true. Dudley didn't know much in the way of the way things worked for wizards but suddenly turning up in your own family history could throw wrenches into things.

He wondered if things like the grandfather paradox were possible?

"If this is time travel..." Dudley hisses, leaning in so that they aren't overheard by the bustling shop goers. "And your lot are capable of time travel does that mean we can get back?"

Harry frowns and slowly shakes his head.

"I don't think Time Turners have been invented yet."

Dudley suddenly feels cold.

"So we're stuck."

"Maybe. Anyway we need money, and for that we need the bank. I just don't know how I can actually get access to any of it. Plus, changing history is really, really, against the rules."

Dudley has nothing to say to that so he tries to concentrate on the brightly coloured shop fronts and people.

It was all very, very bright. Over there was a little store filled to the brim with owls of all shapes and sizes. They were all dreadfully loud, screeching at the passersby over the general hubbub. There was another building with stacks of cauldrons, and over there a small hoard of little children not even ten years old zooming around on broomsticks. He watched in stupefied awe as they kneecapped a grumpy looking old man in a bright purple hat and shot off giggling, the older girl who was apparently their minder sprinting after them.

Eventually they reach a tall crooked building made out of white marble. Harry paused silently at the bottom of the steps, face drawn with concentration.

Dudley was once again struck by how strange his cousin looked, this time with his head tilted upwards toward the great doors, glasses shining with the sunlight peeking over the surrounding buildings, and cloak billowing out behind him.

And then he smiled, a secretive sly little smile, as if he were laughing at some secret joke, and he was heading up the stairs.

There was a pair of- of things, stood guarding the doors, and it is only Harry's suddenly punishing grip on his left arm that keeps him quiet. Glancing at him in alarm Dudley simply receives a calm reassuring smile before he is determinedly tugged forward.

They walk through the large doors, and then the next, which were inscribed with a peculiar text he'd only half seen, and then Dudley stops in his tracks because there definitely hadn't been enough room on either side of the bank for the room to be this wide.

He's momentarily temped to run back out to double check but Harry still has his arm trapped, so he is instead marched towards one of the free booths.

This booth, and all of the other booths as Dudley quickly realises, are manned by more of the wrinkly faced creatures like the ones guarding the entrance. It's short and squat and has a face obviously suited towards blistering scowls, all sharp angles and frown lines and a nose that looked like it had been broken several times. Possibly consecutively.

Harry pauses, collects himself, and smiles at the creature, which squints at him suspiciously from over its books.

"State your business." It barks, setting down its feather quill and peering coldly down at them.

"I'd, er, like to look into claiming an inheritance?"

The creature, which Dudley assumes is a goblin, gives him a thoroughly unimpressed glare.

Harry hastens to explain himself, outright lying through his teeth at this point, or so Dudley gathers.

"I, er, found grandfathers old memoirs you see, and he mentions something about his father's family, uh and that they might have a vault? Either way I'd like to check, it's..." Here he shrugs, hopelessly, the goblin still glowering furiously at him over the counter.

"What family?" It snaps, snatching up it's pen to write it down.

"The Peverell family."

The look Harry gets this time is incredulous. It's a very strange expression to see on the goblins squashed little face. Dudley can't help but feel curious. Apparently the little man recognises the name, but that's a bit of an odd way to react isn't it? He tries to catch his cousins eye but Harry just gives him a slightly strained smile.

"Peverell?"

"...Yes."

There is a lengthy pause.

"Egrick!" The creature bellows, turning sharply on its chair and gesturing violently for another of the short sharp faced little men, this one standing quietly by the side.

It marches over, and the two creatures talk rapidly in a language that Dudley doesn't recognise, completely ignoring the two humans standing right there in front of them.

"Peverell?" Dudley whispers, and Harry smiles again.

"I'll explain later, promise. It's kind of complicated"

"You." The second goblin says suddenly in English, jabbing a hand at Harry. "Follow me."

Dudley blinks, startled, and the other one gives him a look.

"You stay over there." There being a bench by the doors if the weird gesture was any indication, and Dudley hastens to obey, looking wide eyed at Harry.

The younger boy smiles – again – and waves at the blond boy as he is lead away by the second creature and through a small set of double doors.

Gone.

* * *

AN:Busted my hand and then got distracted by an original story- go me!


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